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Wednesday, 4 March 2009

The Derb on Tibet

The original grumpy, pessimistic old man, National Review's John Derbyshire, is wrong about many, many things (especially gay rights), but he is right about Tibet, as this excerpt from his 'February Diary' shows; and, moreover, he is always entertaining and thought-provoking. (Says he who is still ploughing through Clare Short's snore-fest.) UK readers, note and enjoy the old-school US conservative term 'ChiCom'! -

I get a surprising amount of mockery from friends and colleagues — yes, including conservatives — when I raise the issue of Tibet. In part this is because the Tibet issue has been taken up by lefty New Age types. If you want to see FREE TIBET bumper stickers in profusion, go to Berkeley, Boulder, or Burlington, Vt. In part it’s because people, even conservative people, have to some degree absorbed the ChiCom claim that “Tibet has always been a part of China,” which is considerably less true than, for example, “Finland has always been a part of Russia,” and far less true than “Ireland has always been a part of Britain.”It remains the case that these people, who had been minding their own business up there on the Himalayan plateau since a brief burst of national vigor in the 7th century, had their nation invaded, raped, and looted by a neighboring power, for nakedly imperialistic reasons. I should not protest about this? I shall continue to do so every chance I get. George Orwell said, referring to an obnoxiously Stalinist member of Parliament: “Some things are true even though Comrade Zilliacus says they are true.” Well, some things are true even though the Birkenstock, muesli, and mountain-bike crowd say they are true. One of those things is that China’s occupation of Tibet is a monstrous crime that should be stuck in the ChiComs’ faces to shame them at every possible opportunity.Those in the West who defend China's position on Tibet, including those from the Left (or 'the Left'), such as the grim 'Hands Off China' campaign, really are the lowest of the low.